Colder than a Witch's what??

Oh my goodness it is so cold!  I actually have had to break down and hang the window quilts in my room.  I think this is worse than the first polar vortex because it's cold, colder, coldest...sort of a drawn out how cold can it be contest where the devil is, indeed, wearing a fur coat.

Our predicted high for Tuesday is -2  Fahrenheit.  That's down about four degrees from what was predicted earlier today.  If this keeps up, I may have to abandon my bedroom altogether and just drag my mattress to the living room near the fireplace insert.

I'm still not loving coal.  It has its advantages over wood in that it doesn't matter if it gets wet, it's cheaper, and it takes up much less space.  It is, however, messy as F&^%*.  Of course wood is messy, too.  Wood chips and bark pieces fall under the rings where we store the wood inside.  Ash gets all over the place no matter coal or wood.  Ash is just...ash.  As in kiss my.  But coal is special in that every single thing I touch is smudged with black, and when I have to work I am in my pjs until just before time to leave, so that I don't risk getting dirty.  I know I'm going to show up to an appointment with a big black smudge on my face, looking like The Little Match Girl.

I am, in a horribly selfish way, looking forward to the return to fuel oil.  I won't have much choice since we'll all be working next year, so no one will be here to tend the fires. We'll still stock some wood for power outages and super cold days.  But it will be nice to sleep all night instead of setting my alarm to make sure the house stays warm.  Especially on those mornings I need to be up at 4 a.m.  The lack of mess is also a major plus.

And now, I go to tend the fires and get back to my writing assignment for work. Yay me. Oh..and Brrrrrrr...